Arts Council England is offering £1.6m for a new system for National Portfolio Organisations to submit audience data.
A contract out for tender since late February says the software must enable organisations and Creative People and Places projects to share their audience numbers and the postcodes and demographics of a "fully representative sample", as well as allowing them to draw insights from the data.
The insights function should be able analyse box office transactions, provide anonymised data reports, and support benchmarking against population statistics, the tender says.
The arts council is open to a single contractor or a consortia of companies so long as they are the "most economically advantageous" provider.
The system is due to launch by April 1 next year.